Art market news: Banksy market back on track?

High hopes have been pinned on Banksy's Leopard and Barcode at Bonhams' 'urban
art' sale this month.

Leopard and Barcode by BanksyPhoto: PA

By Colin Gleadell

8:28AM GMT 06 Mar 2012

Bonhams clearly believes the Banksy market is back on track and has included no fewer than 17 works by the elusive graffiti artist in its next sale of “urban art” later this month.

With estimates ranging from £2,500 to £80,000, highest hopes have been pinned on Leopard and Barcode, a stencil painting from an edition of five showing a leopard marching away from an oversized barcode on a trolley.

The 2002 painting was bought at Banksy’s Existencilism exhibition in Los Angeles, and has never been offered at auction before, said Bonhams.

Christie’s has announced that it plans to sell £19 million of Old Master paintings from the collection of Pieter and Olga Dreesman in July.

The Brussels-based couple, who are patrons of the Tate and the Bush Theatre in London, began collecting Old Masters about 15 years ago following the example of Pieter’s father, Anton, whose collection was sold at Christie’s in 2002.

Artists often make the best critics, and when it comes to the art market, they can be the most acerbic. I am thinking of Matthew Collings, who studied at Goldsmith’s in the early 1990s, but made his name as an art critic and more recently as a television presenter.

Collings has been critical about the current art world “ruled by money”. “It’s not a good time to be an artist,” he says. With values dictated by money, “art is generally bad at the moment”.

How pleasant to report, therefore, that Collings, who paints in partnership with his wife, Emma Biggs, has just had a sell-out exhibition.

The paintings, geometrical abstractions that resonate with the qualities of ancient Byzantine mosaics, were on show at the Vigo gallery in Old Bond Street, and modestly priced between £8,000 and £18,000 each.

Coinciding with Tate Modern’s exhibition for the Italian conceptual artist Alighiero Boetti, who died in 1994, Spruth Magers in Grafton Street, Mayfair, is presenting work by Boetti that is for sale, with prices ranging from 25,000 euros to 1 million euros.

One work consists of letters he sent to artists, dealers and collectors at spurious addresses, which were then returned to him. Another is a large embroidered map of the world made by Afghan craftswomen.

In the early 1990s, London dealer Edward Totah used to exhibit Boetti’s work and couldn’t sell it at a fraction of these prices. Unfortunately, Totah died before the market for Boetti took off.